A Sound of Thunder Presents Queen of Hell: Initium
Created by A Sound of Thunder
Born to serve in Hell, manipulated by Heaven, neither side reckoned on Cecilia's will to forge her own path of destruction!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Comic signing done! Boring stuff this week!
about 1 year ago
– Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 09:51:05 AM
HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER!
Comic signing is officially done! After our 3+ hour live stream last weekend we did another ~2 hours of signing off camera and overall signed 2,000+ comics plus several hundred other items, but we still had more to do! Yesterday we signed the remaining ~650 comics plus 120 cassettes! We took a full-band video update so if you care to hang with us for 8+ minutes of signing and chatting, here ya go!
If you missed the previous week's live stream, the whole thing is up on Youtube:
We were pretty excited to finish the comic signing so we totally defaced the very last copy we signed:
And here are the fully signed cassettes!
CAMPAIGN FULFILLMENT UPDATE:
Autographs are completely done except for the Demons bonus CDs which have not yet arrived from the factory. (We need to sign about 600 of those and that will happen the first Sunday after they arrive.)
We are currently waiting on three separate orders to arrive before fulfillment can begin: 1) main t-shirt order (black, purple, and 3/4 sleeve raglans); 2) short sleeve raglans (coming from a different printer), and; 3) Demons bonus CDs.
The main t-shirt order should ship to us by tomorrow!
The short-sleeve raglans were on the printing press on Friday so those should be shipping to us in the next day or two. (We've e-mailed the printer for an update today.)
The only ETA we currently have for the bonus discs is sometime in mid-April. We have e-mailed the factory again today for a more specific ETA.
SHIPPING WILL BEGIN IN APRIL...come hell or high water!
WHAT'S HAPPENING THIS WEEK?
There's lots of very boring tasks to be done to prepare for shipping, and that's what Josh will be doing this week!
Ordering shipping supplies. Boxes, CD mailers, Gemini comic mailers, garment mailer bags, tape, shipping labels, etc. We'll break this up into several orders so they don't all arrive at once and take up our limited work space!
Bagging and boarding ~3,000 comics.
Putting all the signed cassettes and CD booklets back in their cases.
Bubble-wrapping shot glasses for "The Works" backers.
Setting up the shipping assembly line. There are so many items that this will be our longest assembly line ever requiring extra tables and some creative use of space!
Sending a test package or two to the EU to see if GPSR impacts us. (New rules for importing products into the EU seem very complicated and we have heard stories about packages being rejected and returned by local customs offices.)
The script for the first issue of Queen of Hell Act II is complete. Today Josh will be doing a final proof-read and putting together a reference file for our new artist Juan Jose Ryp! Juan is scheduled to start drawing any day now as soon as he finishes his current book.
Reference drawing by Rafer Roberts of a certain red dragon...
That's it for today, Legion! As always we thank you for your patience and support while we've gone through some significant changes and challenges! The Thunder-machine is lurching back to life like a metal monster. We'll send a new update with pictures of the t-shirts when they arrive!
Cheers,
Nina, Josh, Jesse & Justin
We're going live RIGHT NOW! Join us on Youtube for the sign-a-thon!
about 1 year ago
– Sun, Mar 23, 2025 at 10:21:12 AM
HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER!
We're about to go live right now as we're sending out this update! We'll be signing 2500+ comics, art prints, and more, hanging out, talking metal and telling band stories! Join us and send your questions and in the chat!
See you soon!
Autograph Mania! LIVE STREAM THIS SUNDAY! New stuff in the works!
about 1 year ago
– Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 10:22:16 AM
HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER!
Here's a video update from Josh. The pertinent info is covered very briefly up front and then there is a longer format chat about everything going on with the campaign and the band!
Pertinent info will also be in bullet points below as usual. This update is a little overdue but for the story on that you'll need to watch the video:
CAMPAIGN UPDATES:
We are steadily making progress on autographing everything. It is taking a lot longer than expected. This is partially due to having a lot of backers (yay) and a lot more physical reward items than ever before (cool), but we also failed to account for everyone being a little older and having more responsibilities and less free time. On Monday night Nina came for the sixth separate autograph session since January. (We have had three full band autograph sessions, and, because schedules did not line up, three partial band sessions.)
This Sunday we will be live streaming as we attempt to autograph 2,100+ Queen of Hell comic books! Join us on Youtube to chat, ask us any questions, and for signed merch & memorabilia giveaways!
Physical Rewards Update: As of our last update we were waiting for all t-shirts, bonus CDs, and trading card sets to arrive. As of today we have now received the Executive Producer t-shirts, the short sleeve raglans are scheduled to ship to us by tomorrow, and the main t-shirt order (black, purple, and long sleeve raglans) is scheduled to ship next week or the week after. Trading cards are scheduled to arrive here on Monday. And we are still waiting for an update on the bonus CDs. We will keep you posted!
Other Rewards & Commitments: Digital rewards and other special rewards like the backers-only listening party, custom themes and private concerts will be figured out once we have all the autographs done and are ready to ship all physical rewards.
Dealing With Delays
Obviously this campaign is super late getting to fulfillment. There wasn't much we could do about Chris retiring or Jesse moving to Montana and back. Fortunately our lineup is solid again! However there are three main areas where we have hit delays. This is what they are and how we're dealing with them, so that these delays never happen again:
Artwork Delays: the #1 delay on this project was the comic art. Mike Ratera turned in his first page of comic art in April of 2019 and his last page in September of 2024. That is so far beyond the scope of how long we ever thought it would or could take that we're not even sure what to say. While the final artwork is AWESOME, we obviously cannot go through that again. With that in mind artist Juan Jose Ryp has officially come on board to draw Queen of Hell Act II! Juan is the perfect choice to continue the story. His style is extremely detailed similar to Mike's, he loves metal, he has experience drawing Hell (Nancy in Hell), and most importantly in the context of dealing with delays, he is fast. The artwork for Queen of Hell Act II will be completely done before we Kickstart that project!
Vinyl Delays: vinyl manufacturing delays have been an issue for us on the last several campaigns. In the past we have always used GZ Media in the Czech Republic. We expect to move production to Furnace Manufacturing in Virginia. Furnace is local to ASoT HQ, just happens to be owned by Metallica, and has a faster turnaround time than GZ. They are a little more expensive, but we've reached the point where we need that extra speed!
Autographs: we have always prided ourselves in offering free autographs, but we have reached the point where we need to reduce the number of autographs on each campaign. We will continue to offer at least one free autograph for every backer! However going forward we will limit additional autographs to Early Birds (first day backers) and/or backers of higher reward tiers like The Works, and for additional autographs we will probably add a small surcharge. We'll need to bring the total number of autographs down to about 1/3rd of what we are doing on this campaign, but everyone will still have the option to get everything signed.
Queen of Hell Act II
We have the full outline for issues #1-4 of Act II!
The music is already written and demoed, and the final drums have been recorded. Nina has already put down vocal melodies using placeholder lyrics. Now that the outline is done she can rework the lyrics to fit with the outline.
The full script for issue #1 is done and ready for Juan Jose Ryp who is scheduled to start drawing this month. He usually takes about 4-6 weeks for each 22-page issue, so he'll need 4 to 6 months to draw all four issues.
Dusan Markovic will return to create our the main cover art. He is scheduled for May!
We are leaning heavily towards bumping up one song from Act III to Act II so that Justin can play drums on at least one song on Act II. The drums for four planned songs on Act II have already been recorded by Chris, so this would mean bumping one of his songs back to Act III or bonus track status to get Justin on Act II.
Generally speaking we are planning to have Act II ready to show off and Kickstart by late summer/early fall.
More New Music
We finished the instrumental arrangements of two new songs last week. These would not be for the Queen of Hell saga but for a separate original album, Justin's first with the band!
We have more than an album's worth of songs demoed up already, but they are earmarked towards at least two separate future albums. One is a little darker and more sinister. The other is a little brighter and more inspiring, and this one is quite close to having a full albums worth of material ready. We expect to have this fully written by the end of the summer. Something a little brighter seems to make sense between chapters of Queen of Hell, and it feels good to stretch out musically in a slightly different direction.
Live Shows
We're chomping at the bit to play more live shows! Nina is tied up in April and May doing a rock opera (more news on that soon), but we're planning to play as much as possible starting in June!
We've just booked at show at Lucky 13 in Brooklyn, NY on Saturday July 26th! We're actively looking for another gig within 2-4 hours of NY on Friday, July 25th. Let us know if you're in that range, want to see us, and have any leads with local venues or promoters!
Alright, that was a long one! As always, thanks for your support and patience, Legion! The machine is moving and we're very close to shipping. Hang in there a little longer!
We'll be back soon with another update. Hope to see you at the live stream on Sunday!
Cheers,
Nina, Josh, Jesse & Justin
Baltimore tomorrow! Autographs underway! Foil cards are printed!
about 1 year ago
– Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 01:33:35 PM
HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER!
Here's the latest on the campaign fulfillment, but first...
WE'RE PLAYING LIVE IN BALTIMORE TOMORROW NIGHT! (Sat. Feb. 15th)
If you're nearby we hope you'll come join us for a night of metal and mayhem! We'll be playing some old stuff and some new stuff, including debuting "Legion of Thunder" from Queen of Hell: Initium! See you at ANGEL'S ROCK BAR! We're on around 11pm but show up early and don't miss local metal warriors Siegebreaker and Night's Edge!
Alright, let's get to Kickstarter stuff! First, here's the usual video update from Josh:
Queen of Hell and Udoroth foil trading cards have been printed and should reach us on Monday! Here's that uncut sheet of Udoroth trading cards that Josh mentioned. (Settle down, mega-collectors. We are not expecting to receive any uncut trading card sheets.)
Thank you cards/postcards are in and being signed! The full band signed a small batch of 50, and the other 700 cards are now being passed among us to sign at home. (We sign all the physical merch at the band house as a group, but we take the thank you cards home individually to save time!)
Here's the rundown on other things!
Chris is coming back this Sunday to do all of his autographs!
Packages not including Demons bonus CDs or t-shirts will start shipping next week! Yay!
We're still waiting on Demons bonus CDs and t-shirts to arrive. We'll keep you posted on those!
Rafer Roberts is going to sign all of the autographed comic scripts tomorrow at our show.
Rafer is also currently working on the script for Queen of Hell Act II.
We've just scheduled Dusan Markovic to paint the main cover for Queen of Hell Act II by May.
Our new comic book artist is scheduled to start drawing the interior of Queen of Hell Act II in March!
We realize that the schedule has continued to slip a bit as some of the final physical items have taken a little longer than planned to come in. Thank you for bearing with us. Hopefully you can tell we are chipping away at this mountain and are near the finish line! Josh, Jesse and Nina all had fairly severe colds and/or the flu in the last 4 weeks. And Nina who was working efficiently from home has been sent back to the office for no good reason, adding 7-8 hours of weekly commute time and taking it straight out of the free time that would otherwise have been dedicated to the band. So we know you're probably hearing more than enough about all that right now, but just know that it has already affected us negatively. The Krimson Kult strikes again, we guess. (P.S. potential sequel to that album in the works.)
Regardless, you can't keep us down and we are going to bring this project home with fulfillment starting next week!
Have a great weekend everyone! Enjoy Valentine's Day if you're partnered up. Love yourself vigorously if you're not. And come see us in Baltimore on Saturday if you're around!
Cheers,
Nina, Josh, Jesse & Chris
Live stream giveaway! Comics are in! Tattoos done! Show coming up!
about 1 year ago
– Thu, Feb 06, 2025 at 10:51:36 AM
HAIL, LEGION OF THUNDER!
Comics are finally here! Update below, but first...
MEET JUSTIN! LIVE STREAM GIVEAWAY and Q&A COMING UP ON MONDAY FEB. 10TH!
Join us for this Youtube live stream! Ask Justin anything! We'll be giving away signed drum heads and other goodies to folks who show up in the chat!
Click the event image below to set a reminder for yourself!
Ok, let's go pick up some comics!
And check out the metal 1-of-1 comics!
There are only FOUR metal 1-of-1 comics remaining out of a total of twelve. (Each cover has only ONE metal edition.) You can grab one of the final four here:
As Josh said in the video, the next task is autographing a TON of those comics, plus CDs, vinyl, cassettes, etc. We actually did a session with Chris already, but it was after our tattoo session, and we spent several hours just removing items from shrink wrap and didn't actually get to any signing! Here's us after completing our tattoo blood pact!
And here's us at the intended first signing session!
Currently we are awaiting only a few more of the main items:
t-shirts
Demons bonus CDs
metal trading cards (all backers get these)
thank you cards/post cards (all backers get these)
Both cards are scheduled to be printed in the next few days, so we are very close to having some packages ready to ship. We're still not sure exactly when the bonus CDs and shirts will arrive, but not all backers get those items, so we can at least start on some shipping in the next 1-2 weeks. The next autograph session may be this weekend or next weekend depending on Chris' schedule. But the band will individually be taking the thank you cards home to sign as soon as they arrive, so packages with no other autographed items will be ready to ship sooner.
Another job left to do is to bag and board all 3,600 comics. YIKES! Josh will be handling that, but honestly...doesn't that feel like it should be a bassist job? ;0)
Finally for today, we are prepping for our next show on February 15th at Angel's Rock Bar in Baltimore! We are selling tickets to this one directly so do us a solid and grab your ticket from us by clicking on the image below:
